Red Bull confirmed their status as the team to beat in Formula 1 with their second straight sweep of the Drivers' and Constructors' Championships last year and begin 2012 with one clear aim - becoming just the fourth team in F1 history to win three consecutive titles.
It's easy to forget that when energy drinks magnate Dietrich Mateschitz launched his F1 squad in 2005, after taking over the failed Jaguar project, the Milton Keynes outfit were accused of being more interested in throwing lavish paddock parties than achieving on-track success. But such is the level of performance the World Champions have reached over the past two seasons, those barbs are now just a distant memory.
Red Bull's rise to the upper echelons of the F1 grid was more steady than spectacular at first - the first podium arrived courtesy of David Coulthard at Monaco in 2006 - but since Sebastian Vettel delivered their breakthrough maiden pole and win all in the same sodden Chinese GP weekend in 2009 the scale of improvement has been immense.
Up until last year their rivals could take some comfort from the fact that reliability, and RBR's performance on lower-downforce tracks, remained something of an Achilles heel for design genius Adrian Newey's tightly-packaged creations. However, the team managed to dispel all of those perceived weaknesses last season in a relentlessly dominant campaign while maiden victories at Spa and Monza, and a near-miss in Montreal, showed that the Renault-powered Red Bull was now a force to be reckoned with on all types of circuit. In all, they registered 12 race victories and a record 18 pole positions - ominous numbers for anyone with ambitions of taking them on in 2012.
In the outstanding Sebastian Vettel they possess not only a home-grown Red Bull superstar, but a two-time world champion who continues to strive for improvement, while gritty Australian Mark Webber is determined to rediscover the kind of form that took him so close to the 2010 title.
With stability also stretching to their technical and management staff, along with the onset of an advanced engine deal with Renault, all the signs suggest that Red Bull are only likely to get stronger. In which case, the obvious question for 2012 has to be: who can stop them?
